Core Facility Focuses on Media Arts

Media arts and technologies are key components in education, and Nebraska will continue to be a major contributor to those efforts, thanks to an infusion of funding.

The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts received $625,000 from the university’s Nebraska Research Initiative to establish itself as a core research facility at Nebraska.

The facility – the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts-Design and Innovation Core – will leverage emerging media arts and technologies to strengthen the quality of a Nebraska education, cultivate interdisciplinary research communities of practice, engage with Nebraska’s startup communities and enhance an international network of distributed innovation outside of traditional metro hubs.

It is the only research core facility in the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and the only arts-based research core facility across Nebraska.

“The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is thrilled to create this Design and Innovation Core,” said Megan Elliott, founding director of the Carson Center. “Our faculty are already engaged in national and international research, and this core research facility will only strengthen our research and innovation.”

A research core facility offers the university community and external clients shared access to specialized instrumentation, research expertise and services in an organized, cost-effective manner.

One example of the core’s research service capabilities is a project by Jesse Fleming, assistant professor of emerging media arts and founding director of the Awareness-Based Design Lab, who is collaborating with external artists. The Carson Center is providing technical expertise in augmented and mixed reality, virtual production and real-time filmmaking for a project that culminated in a live mixed-reality performance season of “The Wilds” at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in fall 2022.

NRI funding is designed to facilitate and grow faculty research programs that have an impact in Nebraska and worldwide.